WHY IT RATES: Travelport partneredwith major agencies and airlines to optimize NDC content within its Merchandising Suite.-Janeen Christoff, TravelPulse Senior Writer
Travelport, a leading travel commerce platform, unveiled its product roadmap to extend its content offering to airline customers using the International Air Transport Association (IATA) New Distribution Capability (NDC) standard. This will enable travel agency customers to access such content via Travelport's platform.
In December 2017, Travelport was the first, and is still the only, GDS operator to achieve IATA's highest certification as an NDC Level 3 Aggregator. The company is now consolidating and extending its lead by industrializing its NDC capability and incorporating NDC content within its suite of products for airlines and travel agencies.
These products will allow travel agencies to connect through Travelport's platform in a single workflow combining traditional content and new NDC content. They will be enhanced and optimized continuously, based on the evaluation of users and customers.
Travelport plans to include NDC content within an initial set of products as follows:
-An industrialized connection for airlines that connects via NDC-standard APIs.
-A Point of Sale companion application for travel agencies that offers NDC-enabled content alongside the GDS workflow in our leading Travelport Smartpoint desktop. This integrated app will be launched from Travelport Smartpoint for ease of use alongside the existing processes and will be ready in the second half of 2018.
-Shortly afterward, a first fully integrated search, book and manage function, combining NDC-connected content and GDS content in the same workflow, will be offered to travel agency customers on the latest Travelport solutions including Travelport's next generation API Trip Services.
-This integrated display and search response will be the foundation for all future releases, both through API and desktop.
The NDC-enabled content will augment already extensive API content within Travelport's industry-leading airline Merchandising Suite.
Travelport already connects to 24 airlines through APIs and expects to announce the first of many NDC-enabled airline partnerships very soon.
NDC integration is being developed in collaboration with a select number of agents and airlines who are providing continuous feedback as we approach the launch. This group includes major agencies such as Travix and BidTravel.
These partnerships will enable Travelport to ensure its NDC integration serves the needs of all of its stakeholders as this product suite evolves.
Travelport chief commercial officer, Stephen Shurrock, said: "Building on our unique NDC Level 3 status, we are extending our range of products ready for the new mixed-economy era of airline distribution."
"Travelport has a rich history of innovation and, with our NDC-enabled products, we intend to maintain this as we seamlessly, speedily and accurately deliver the broadest range of bookable content to our customers," added Shurrock.
Yanik Hoyles, IATA's NDC program director, noted: "Following its achievement as the first GDS to become NDC Level 3 certified as an aggregator, we congratulate Travelport on its continued progress in developing products for this new era and look forward to their initial launch later this year."
SOURCE: Travelport press release.
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